The question I have been asking time and again over the last three months is this: Whatever became of individual responsibility?
It's a question that comes to me as I watch news coverage of riots in Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, the Twin Cities, and elsewhere.
The question comes forward when I hear career politicians blame police and others for the violence and mayhem occurring daily in our cities.
I wonder about individual responsibility when I see looting and burning businesses, or standing before a TV camera and demanding compensation for acts that occurred more than 150 years ago.
A friend recently told me there would be no riots if there was justice in our society. I asked him what role individual responsibility had in establishing justice, he said I must work for justice if I seek peace.
I thought the answer inadequate and incomplete. Yes, we must seek justice and peace, but how do we secure either if we do not emphasize and expect individual responsibility?
I like the old adage that states individual rights carry the burden of individual responsibility. They are two sides of the same coin. If we value our rights, we must accept the burden of our responsibilities.
I also like Jean Jacques Rousseau's " The Social Contract", which I first read more than 40 years ago. I agree with Rousseau's fundamental assertion that individual members of a society accept a contract with the larger society to meet and support its expectations and norms. The contract provides benefits to both the society (individual compliance) and the individual (services the individual needed). If we received benefits from the society (community), we accept a commitment to support the community through ahearance to its rules - each of them, not just the ones we like. It's a simple exchange.
And that leads me to wonder why the individuals who are throwing rocks through windows, looting merchandise, and setting fire to public and private property are so quick to take the benefits of our society but never, with rare exception, accept their individual responsibility to society.
I don't expect an authentic answer to my question, particularly when we don't make an effort to teach Rousseau (or many other philosphers) to young students. Still, the question remains. It reminds me that our society, our culture, we as people, once were keenly aware of our responsibilities and of our duty to meet them.
I miss those days.
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The riots and unrest we see nightly in American cities troubles me as much it does most Americans, but the commentary that attempts to explain what we see and hear from the rioters also bothers me.
Actually, it is what's missing from the commentary that sets me off.
